Picture has little to do with the blog BUT it made me laugh:
Culturally speaking, I don’t know what dominates the conversations of other races, but as a black man it is rare for me to go more than a week without hearing, seeing, or reading some kind of comment or opinion on interracial dating. Sometimes directed right at me. I consider this to be one of the least important topics on Earth, but it seems that people are endlessly fascinated with it.
“You may be shocked to find out that I have participated in my fair share of interracial dating over the years,” W.I.M. said sarcastically. Therefore, I thought I’d give some background on my experiences. This wasn’t limited to only white women as some might suspect. I’ve dated women from a myriad of racial backgrounds. In the vein of honesty, I must admit that at one point I did go as far as to stop dating black women – but I’m getting ahead of myself.
For informational purposes and for those of you who don’t know me let me give a little background on myself. Despite the confusion that might ensue as you view my pictures in the ‘About W.I.M.’ section, I am full black. That often enlists an argumentative response, so let me explain what I mean by ‘full black.’ My father is black, my mother is black, and my paternal grandparents on both sides are black. Meaning, as far as I know, no one up to this point in my family tree is mixed. My parents will have been married for 29 years this December. And I spent my entire life growing up in the suburbs, a point that might have merit later on. Anyway, anything else you’d like to know feel free to ask in the comment section below.
Statistically I have dated far more black or mixed black women than any other race of women. I’ll elaborate more on that in Part 2 of this series. However, I should point out that my first kiss was from a white girl. Her name was Cassie. I was in elementary school and we were standing in line for recess. For whatever reason, she took it upon herself to step out of line, walk right up to me and kiss me – right on the lips no less! Naturally, with my elementary reputation at stake, I vehemently albeit falsely accused of her of infecting me with cooties, but deep down inside, I knew I liked it. Unfortunately, she never tried to kiss me again and I was too fearful to return the favor. I might have thrown a few rocks at her and pushed her down on the playground though, which in my childish opinion clearly demonstrated that the affection was mutual. But I digress…
Without realizing it had Cassie changed the course of my entire life!? Was there no turning back? Had this woman of Caucasian decent predisposed me to a lifetime affliction of attraction to women of varying races? I don’t know. I’d hate to cite one single event in elementary school as having had such a powerful influence on my life, but they do say “everything you need to know, you learned in elementary school.”
Flashing forward, my “first” was white too. Yes, that first. Ironically, this was also the first white girl I ever dated. Until then, I had dated only black women. Not because that’s all I was willing to date – but because that’s really all I ever approached and that ever approached me.
I was young at that time but even now I haven’t found many of the stereotypical assessments of Caucasian, Hispanic, Latina, Black, Asian, or other races of women to be true. Of course, some are true – but it trends towards culture aspects, not predictable personalities. First and foremost, the uniting thread between all women – in my humble opinion – is that you are all crazy. So there’s always that. I haven’t observed major differences in actions, emotions, reactions, and mannerisms that could be directly attributed to race alone. Even if true none have been significant enough for me to prefer one over the other simply based on their racially inherited trait – if such a thing exists.
Now I was well into college before I proactively “stopped” dating black women. I place stop in quotes because I never stopped completely. Instead I became more active in pursuing women of different races.
I don’t know why other black men stop dating black women or even date outside their race but I did it for a few reasons: 1) I was never predisposed to not dating women of differing nationalities. I’d always been attracted to all kinds of women. I had just never proactively pursued them (nor they me); 2) I grew tired of having to atone for the sins of all black men (mind you this was college). Admittedly, I was also filled with anger and disappointment with the lack of success many of my same-raced relationships were having. Please note that in my youthful ignorance, I attributed this to race instead of self-reflection and specific elements of those particular relationships; and 3) I was curious. Regardless of the reasons, once I began fully investigating these interests I was exceptionally successful. And, to this day, I have yet to return to limiting myself to dating only black women.
As you can see I have a lot to say on this topic, because there is a lot to be said – which is why I purposely chose to break it across three blogs. If you have anything to add or general feedback/questions at this point, please place them in the comment section below. I’ll answer as applicable and it’ll help guide my next few blogs.
Some questions I have for the readers thus far are: 1) What are your thoughts on interracial dating? Have you tried it? Why or why not? 2) If you have, were there noticeable differences? Such as? 3) Would you marry outside of your race? Or in your opinion, is love colorblind?
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